The current method of marketing real estate property for sale is labor intensive and necessarily results in significant variation in the quality and timeliness of information transfer between the property seller, the seller's agent and the prospective buyers.
“For Sale By Owner” and other methods of selling real estate which do not involve formal and substantive real estate agent involvement are susceptible to significant confusion, lost time, legal and other difficulties inherent in satisfactory execution of a sale. Such methods can potentially expose both the seller and the buyer to significant risks and legal liabilities.
Traditional real estate signs serve only to direct prospective buyers to a single real estate office or agent. Such “For Sale” properties can only be investigated during certain (e.g., daylight, agency office, etc.) hours and such appointments must most often be scheduled ahead of time through the buyer's agent and/or the property occupants. This is especially problematical when property offered for sale is unoccupied, located in rural areas, or is otherwise distant or requires significant travel time from the listing real estate office. Further, property visits are documented only by agents leaving their business cards and visit durations are usually undeterminable. Such information may materially assist in achieving a rapid sale satisfactory to all parties. Since interactions between the seller and potential buyer are traditionally discouraged, potential buyer comments, impressions and criticisms about the property are rarely relayed to the seller. Additionally, there is no record of entries to/exits from the property, nor of specific points of entry used (e.g., front door, sliding door, garage door, external basement entrance, window, etc.), regardless of how many entrances, exits, or transits of the property are made during a visit. Thus, no method of tracking activity at the property is ordinarily at hand today other than the presence of a business card voluntarily left by a visiting agent.
In addition, updated information concerning a specific property, for example, the presence of an offer and its status, schedules for showing the property, changes in price or terms, etc., is typically available only through agent request (i.e., “pull”) or agent-mediated buyer request (i.e., “pull”), as opposed to via network-mediated automatic notifications (i.e., “push”)to agents and also simultaneously to potential buyers.
In addition to these limitations of the current real estate business model, the security of a property listed for sale is often compromised by the placement of a mechanical real estate lock box on one or more points of access on the property. Such prior art lock boxes operate via a common physical key or spin dial combination distributed to many agents and boxes are reused among properties offered for sale. Such factors compromise the security of the real estate property.
In light of the foregoing limitations of the prior art real estate selling methods, there is clearly a need for an intelligent real estate system to promote communication of information between the seller and other interested parties (e.g., agents, occupants, potential buyers) to enhance the overall effectiveness and security of the property.